Winds were again howling on Wednesday with a few locations reaching gusts over 50 MPH. It seems that this spring season has seen more than its fair share of windy days. One may wonder who has seen the most wind over the past five weeks or so... The featured map presents an analysis of average NCEP RTMA wind speed based on hourly data since 1 March. For Iowa, this analysis indicates the highest average wind speeds over far NW Iowa with lesser values in far NE and far SE Iowa. Since the RTMA considers topography, vegetation, and land use, you can readily see the impacts of each in the map. Areas of water are flat and thus less disruptive to winds, so values will be higher than adjacent land. Urban and heavily forested areas reduce near surface wind speeds due to increased flow obstruction. There are plenty of more windy days in the immediate term forecast.

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